OneLike the Dog Star, the one astronomers say is therebut we cannot see it. Like a sly ghost, existing onlyin the corner of the eye. Like that, the truth behindall men’s eyes, that wariness, that hunger, smirking mouth,the lips wet with kissing, with devouring.

TwoStray errata on the Internet. A simple searchwith related terms and you might come upwith anything. You might come up with him,a dozen photos (here they’re pics) of bodiesin motion. Which is his? Which hand?Which chest? The pattern of hair therebetween each nipple a map you mustsurely recognize. Stray erotica on the Internet.Here, everyone’s a headless star or, likea photographer friend of mine once proved,every man is a shirtless star, a red ball capon his head obscures his down-turned face.My friend found these men using simplesearch terms: sex + ball caps + men,then spliced them together into an endlessred capped loop, Andy Warhol’s dreamof an infinitely reproducible sex machine.

ThreeWe must not measure men on the assumptionthat all they want is sex. Straight men.Gay men. Bi men. Yet, all we want is sex,to hear someone praise us withyou’re the biggest and the best.To be on top (or bottom or vers) isto be in control. To say to the world,as you fuck it, I own you!One must not presume such basenessof desire, though statistics showthat if you ask any man what he’s thinkingabout at any particular moment,if honest, he’ll say sex.

FourHard to appear the model of masculinitywithout the proper riding lawn mower,the proper pickup truck, the properscuff and boots and scruff.A man’s man will show a shadow by 5PM.Too clean cut and you wonder whetherhe has the hormones to perform,the balls to drive that motorcyclebetween his thighs.

FiveThe rest of us have our secrets.The light behind the eyes that sayssomeone’s home, hoarding knowledgeof the world that would make your head spin.Really. Too pretty to be alive sohe must be up to something. Too plainto rate the slightest stare so he can’tbe up to anything. Too run-of-the-millso you cannot care what he’s thinking.The ordinary know the extraordinarywon’t show us the slightest attention,so we can do as we please amongourselves, invisible as Dog Stars.We can get away with anything.

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Editor’s Note: William Reichard has published with us before! Check out his poem “First Kiss.”

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